Once upon a Time
by inalasahl
Summary: Complete: An AU (alternative universe) explanation of how Drusilla and Angel met.
1. Once upon a Time 1

Disclaimer: I don't own Drusilla, Angel or Darla. They belong to Joss Whedon, The WB and probably a bunch of other people. I just borrowed them, and no copyright infringement is intended.  
Archive: Do not archive without permission.  
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Mia McDavid for suggesting part of the ending.

Notes: This was not originally written as an AU fic. This story was started prior to the airing of "Becoming" and its flashbacks, and was my version of what exactly Drusilla had been talking about in "Lie to Me." 

"It was so long ago I think it may have happened to someone else ... " 

She was very young. Unaware of the picture she cast, destined someday to be hauntingly beautiful, a pale white shadow. Her long nightgown trailed along the floor as she snuck out of her bedroom. She ignored it, trying to find a good hiding place at the top of the stairs to watch the people who had come to her parents's party. 

All of the assorted people were waltzing and it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. After a time her gaze narrowed to two couples who had her completely entranced. Her parents, of course, looking as in love and in tune as ever when they were young and then a nother couple — a man with dark hair and a beautiful blonde woman. The couple was enchanting. They danced as if there were no one else in the room. And yet, 'He's looking for someone,' the thought came to her, as so many did, unasked for. Just lying there in her mind. Then it happened. The man's head lifted and his eyes seemed to settle directly on her hiding place, pinning her down, only a heartbeat, then his eyes moved away. 'I wonder if he saw me? Yes, he did. I'm the one he's looking for.' The thought scared her and she raced madly back to her bedroom, leaping into bed and pulling the covers over her head. 

A time later the door opened. She scrunched her yes tightly shut and pretended to be asleep. The door shut firmly and the lamp was lit, casting a red glow against her eyelids. A heavy weight settled on the bed. "Open your eyes, little girl, I know you're awake," a voice so soft she had to strain to hear it. 

Her eyes popped open and she sat up in a rush. "I'm not a little girl!" she cried indignantly, forgetting her fear in her ire. She was looking at the man from the party. His eyes were as dark as his hair and his gaze was penetrating. 

He smiled indulgently and put a finger to his lips. "Shh, and how old are you?" he asked. 

"Eight," she said proudly. 

"You're ancient. What is your name old woman?" he said. 

She giggled. "Drusilla, and you are?" she asked guilelessly. 

"Angelus." 

"Why were you looking for me?" she asked. 

"How did you know I was looking for you?" 

She shrugged, "I just did. Sometimes I," Just then the door opened and the blonde woman came in. 

"Angelus, I'm getting hungry," she said. 

He turned, annoyed. "So go get something to eat," he said. 

"I've already done that. We can't have too many people disappearing from this party. The Master doesn't want to move again just yet," she said and then she noticed the young girl sitting on the bed. "What a tasty little morsel," she said. 

"No, we're not going to kill her," he said, standing up and placing himself between the two of them. 

Her eyes narrowed. "She's too young and since when do you like brunettes?" 

"Sheath your claws, darling. No one is ever going to steal me away from you. I know she's young." He turned back to the girl on the bed and reached up to finger a lock of her hair. "So pretty, so sweet, so innocent," he whispered. "How perfect." 

At the words, a ribbon of fear twisted through the little girl. She didn't understand what they were talking about, but it scared her, neveretheless. She shivered and then shivered again and clutched tight to her doll. Angelus saw her fear and smiled. 

He kissed her softly on the forehead. "Go to sleep, Drusilla, and don't tell anyone we were here. We'll see each other again." And then Angelus took the blonde woman's hand and walked out of the room without a backward glance. 

He was back the next night. Drusilla was awakened from a sound sleep to find im staring at her speculatively. "Are you a dream?" she asked. "I thought you were when I woke up this morning." 

"Close," he said. 'Actually, I'm a nightmare.' 

"What are you then?" she said. 

He ignored her. "If you could do anything you wanted to, anything at all, what would it be?" 

"I'd have a tea party. I used to have them all the time when I was little. But now, I can only have them two or three times a week, because I have lessons," she said. 

He looked disappointed in her answer and sighed, but he smiled at her. "Then we shall have a tea party," he said. 

"May I really?" she asked. 

"Yes," he said, and they did. 

Not only that night, but for a whole week, until the day Angelus came in her bedroom, but didn't sit at his accustomed seat. 

"Put your shoes on. We're going out," he said. 

"I'm not allowed to go outside without my governess," she informed him primly. 

"Too bad," he said. "Now put your shoes on." 

She stared at him. "No, I want to have a tea party!" she said, on the verge of a tantrum. 

He sighed and faster than she had thought possible he had picked her up and clamped a hand over her mouth. She fought and kicked with all her mighty, but he didn't hardly seem to notice. She was trapped, wedged in his strong arms. Luckily, she was too angry to be scared. 

"I was going to let you walk. But you had to be stubborn. Quit kicking me," he ground out, yanking on her hair. "It's going to be difficult enough to get you down the side of the house without dropping you." In reply she bit his hand hard enough to draw blood, a few tiny drops spilling into her mouth. He only laughed and there was a deadly, unearthly tone to his voice when he said, "i like girls who bite. Yes, I like them very much." It was such an odd thing for an adult to say. It penetrated the anger in her brain. He was kidnapping her! Suddenly, they were perched over the edge of her windowsill and the ground looked very far away. Drusilla fainted. 

When she awoke they were traveling through a forest. Angelus still carried her, but he had long since removed his hand from her mouth. "Where are we going?" she asked. 

"To meet some friends of mine. They need to see you. We wouldn't want to have any mistakes. I'll have you back before anyone notices you're gone," he said reassuringly. He seemed unsurprised that she was awake. 

'Mistakes?' she thought. "Will that blonde woman be there?" she asked. 

"Darla? Yes, she'll be there." 

"Who is she?" 

"You can think of her as my wife." 

"She has a pretty name. It's as pretty as she is. Do you think I'll be that pretty when I grow up?" 

"Are you always this inquisitive?" he said. 

She looked at him puzzled. 

He sighed. "Do you always ask so many questions?" 

"My father says its better for me to ask questions, if I can't be quiet. Sometimes when I tell people the things I know about them, it upsets them," she said. 

"Like yesterday, when you asked me why I was looking for you?" 

"Yes." 

There was no more conversation after that and Drusilla sang softly to herself for the rest of the way. Eventually they entered a cave. 

"Put your nice faces on. We have a guest," Angelus called out. The cave had labyrinthian twists and turns that made Drusilla dizzy. Soon she was lost. Finally, they entered a dimly lit chamber. There were perhaps 20 people inside. At the center on a stone chair sat a man with a horribly disfigured face. 'This is the man Darla called the Master,' Drusilla thought. 

When she saw him, Drusilla shrank back towards Angelus in fear, but she couldn't stop the words that came out of her mouth. "You're old, and you have power," she said. 

The man laughed. "And so do you my dear." Then he looked at her for the longest time as if he was reading her soul, seeing all her secrets. "Angelus, when I heard that you'd become obsessed with an 8-year old girl, I was worried. But you've done well. Pity, we'll have to wait for her to grow up. Then again, we've got all the time in the world, and I mighty just choose to bring her across. She would make an exquisite addition to our little group," the Master said. 

Drusilla looked at Angelus. He looked angry and dangerous and for a second his eyes seemed to glow. "She's mine. I've marked her. She's already tasted a few drops of my blood," he said. 

The two men's eyes locked and a silent battle of wills ensued. 'They're both strong and powerful, but they respect each other. They don't want to fight. They aren't sure who would win,' Drusilla thought. 

The Master backed off. "I have minions enough for the time being. You'd better take her back. None of us will harm her," he said, looking around significantly at the others in the room. "You'll have to hurry to make it back before sunrise." 

Angelus carried her back and she fell asleep, lulled by the rhythmic lilt of his walk. She awoke when they got back into her bedroom. 

"What was that man talking about?" she asked. 

"I didn't think you heard that," he said. "What was that song you were singing earlier?" 

The distraction worked. "My mother taught it to me. She sings all the time. She could have been an opera singer if she hadn't married my father," she said. 

"How sweet," he said dryly. "I have a present for you. A doll," Angelus said, pulling it from under his coat. Drusilla was so pleased to get a present that wasn't for her birthday or Christmas that it drove all thoughts of the cave out of her mind. ----- After that he would visit Drusilla frequently, but with no regularity. He might come every night for weeks on end or he might not show up for months. Drusilla never knew if or when he was coming. After that first night he never asked her again to keep silent about his visits, but it was understood. Drusilla didn't know what would happen if she told anyone, but she suspected she wouldn't be allowed to see him anymore and she craved his attention. She was the fourth child out of seven, the exact middle and a girl. She was mostly ignored and when she wasn't, her parents were trying to explain away the shocking or often odd things she said. They loved her, but they didn't understand her. But Angelus liked it when she told him the things she sometimes knew. In fact, he would often ask her opinion. Little stuff at first. "Will it rain tonight?" And then more complicated things. Sometimes, she didn't know what he was talking about, but the answers would be in her head just the same. And he brought her presents from places far away. 


	2. Once upon a Time 2

Disclaimer: I don't own Drusilla, Angel or Darla. They belong to Joss Whedon, The WB and probably a bunch of other people. I just borrowed them, and no copyright infringement is intended.  
Archive: Do not archive without permission.  
Acknowledgements: Thanks to Mia McDavid for suggesting part of the ending.

Notes: This was not originally written as an AU fic. This story was started prior to the airing of "Becoming" and its flashbacks, and was my version of what exactly Drusilla had been talking about in "Lie to Me." 

7 years later 

Their relationship remained basically unchanged for years until the night Drusilla awoke to Angelus shaking her with a lethal violence. "Angelus?" she managed between the rattling of her teeth. "Please, you're hurting me," she said. 

"Where have you been all month?" he said. 

"Seashore, seashore," she said desperately. He seemed not to hear her. "The seashore." 

"What?" he said, her words finally penetrating the rage in his mind. He let go and she fell back onto the bed, looking at him with huge, wide eyes. 

"My family went to the seashore for a month. I would have told you, but I haven't seen you since the decision was made," she said 'What happened?' She looked at him carefully. He looked normal. The earlier violence was gone. 'No, not gone — leashed.' She ventured a comment. "You scared me just now." 

"I didn't know where you had gone," he said. "Don't ever leave again without telling me." 

She had never seen him like this. Usually, he acted as if he couldn't care less about her. As if his visits to her were a kindness out of his heart, as if she were a charity case. "Why do you care?" she asked. 

He moved to leave. "I'll see you tomorrow evening," he said. 

It was the first time he had ever told her when he would visit and she hated to say it. "I won't be here," she said. "I'm going to my first dance." 

"Don't go," he ordered. 

"I have to. What would I tell my parents? That the man who sometimes visits my bedroom won't let me? What do you want from me?" 

"Make an excuse. Find some reason in that clever brain of yours," he said. 

"Why shouldn't I go? Give me a reason. I'm not a child anymore. And you've never noticed. I can't just accept this anymore. I have to get on with my life. This can't go on. Who are you, Angelus?" she said. 

"I've noticed you're not a child anymore," he said. She moved to kiss him. "Don't," he warned, pushing her away. 

"I don't understand you. Why do you come here?" 

He moved towards the window. "Don't go to the party." He was gone. 

Afterwards, she reflected that he had neither explained nor apologized. She went to the party. ----- The next time she saw him he brought Darla. Betrayal. Drusilla stared at the blonde in shock, she had long since forgotten about her. 'This is Angelus's wife,' she thought. 

"So this is what you've been up to, all the time we were fighting. How old is she now?" Darla asked. 

"Fifteen," he replied. Drusilla didn't like this woman. She stared at Drusilla as if she were an odd bug that she would like to crush under her foot. There was something predatory about her and it chilled Drusilla to the bone. Angelus could be the same way sometimes, but Drusilla had long since gotten used to him. In him, she could ignore. And there was the way that woman looked at Angelus, as if she had a claim on him. 'He's mine,' Drusilla thought. 

"She's still young. But you know darling, I think she thinks she's in love with you," Darla said. 

'She talks like I'm not even here,' Drusilla thought. 

Angelus smiled fondly at Darla. "Good, that will make this more fun." Darla smiled in return and then reached up caressing his cheek, cutting it with her razor sharp nails, drawing a bloody line. She pulled his head down and began licking at the blood. Angelus drew her wrist to his mouth, kissed it and with his teeth, pierced it and began sucking the blood from it gently, tenderly, reverently. Drusilla stared in shock, unable to move or scream. It was so surreal, her mind rejected the images her eyes were sending it. It wasn't happening. This was Angelus, her best friend and the man she had recently begun fantasizing about and he was *drinking* someone's blood. It was too much. She fainted. 

"She's fainted, darling. What a pity," Darla said. 

"No, it's better this way, dear. I want to draw this out for a very long time. She's so innocent, so chaste, even now. It will be so much fun to torment her," he said. 

"And fitting punishment for her. Perhaps, once you've broken her, you'll lose this odd obsession you have with a human. Let's go, darling. I can think of a lot more fun things to do," she said, taking his arm. ----- Drusilla remained pale, sickly looking the next day, thinking of what she had seen. A cold fog had descended over her brain. She blocked the reality and the horror of the situation from her mind and examined it detachedly. That night he came through the window, looking normal and as handsome as ever. Not even a scratch on his face as proof of what she had seen. "Why did you bring her? To punish me? For having a life that doesn't include you? What do you want from me? A commitment? I don't even know who you are. I don't even know *what* you are. You're not human are you? That was not normal, what I saw," she said. 

"You belong to me," he said. 

For the first time she could ever remember she was angry at him. "You have Darla. What could you want with me?" 

"Darla is my soulmate. You are my property. Don't try to confuse the two. I can be dangerous if need be," he said. 

He didn't come again for several months. And she was glad of the time it had given her to think. There was an awkwardness about their interactions now. She wasn't quite as naive as she had been. There was something different about him, something dangerous and it scared her. Now she saw the rapacious way he sometimes looked at her and she was afraid. Her mind screamed at her to end their relationship. But she felt that was as possible as stopping her own heartbeat. Angelus would never hurt her. She had to believe that. 

She tested the boundaries of their relationship. She tried to build a life for herself away from him. She went to parties and dances and flirted with other men, thinking seriously about getting married and starting her own family. 

Often they argued. After some visits, she would be so terrified that she swore to herself that the next time she saw him she would find a way to end these clandestine visits. Like the time he described in detail the way she had danced at the latest party and who with. She hadn't even seen him. But he always seemed to know when she was feeling that way and he would disappear for months. And when he came back (with presents always) she would find herself mesmerized by him and the words would stick in her throat. It was as if he would go away to clear his head and then come to the conclusion that he shouldn't care what she did with other people and so therefore, he didn't. He would act normal then, for a time. But always, in the back of her mind, there was that fear. A day of reckoning was coming. ----- 4 years later 

The party's noise had given her mother a headache. Drusilla volunteered to go home with her. She was nervous, skittish unable to enjoy any party, never knowing if Angelus was watching or what he would do. 'I used to want to waltz,' she thought. 'How silly I was.' He was certain to be watching — they had argued over her going. 

The coach stopped. 'Are we home already?' But no, there was a man with a gun. He shot the driver and then pulled them out of the carriage. His hand reached up grabbing the necklace from around Drusilla's throat. She watched it all in slow motion, detached, it couldn't be happening. 

A snarl. The highwayman was grabbed roughly and flung down, his head slamming into the ground. The moon came out from the clouds. 'Angelus!' Joy, they were saved, but — the face. 'It's Angelus, but it isn't. His face looks like . . .' She reached back far. Memory stirred in the depths of her mind. Awoke. 'He looks like the Master.' She froze. All thought stopped. Angelus beat the man util he was unrecognizable, dead. Her mother, shocked by the display of brutality, babbled, wanting nothing more than to get home. "Oh thank you sir, how can I repay you, no telling what might have hapened if you didn't come along. I . . ." Angelus turned to her, grabbed her by the hair, dragged her throat to his mouth and drank greedily and noisily. 

Drusilla watched silently, a nightmare before her. She understood now. Her mind whispered, 'A demon from hell.' Then it began to shut down, to break, threads unraveling. Her fear was gone and replaced by the most deadly calm. 'Am I next Angelus?' she wondered. 

He finished and smiled at her. "This is what happens when girls don't do what they are told," he said. dropping the body to the ground and leaving. 

Drusilla stood for the longest time before she began to cry. She sat down on the ground, hugging her mother's body to her. Whispering over and over, "Oh mommy I'm sorry. Oh mommy I'm sorry. I didn't realize. I didn't know." 

When they were found, Drusilla was too hysterical to answer the questions. They put it together on their own: two highwaymen killed the coachman and the mother, then they argued, one killing the other and then fleeing. When Drusilla heard the story she began to giggle hysterically. 'How do they explain that mother was drained of all her blood or that the supposed loser of the argument had all of our possessions?' she thought. She was put to bed and she stayed the next week in her room, not eating, only sleeping when she was too exhausted to dream. 

The household staff and her family tiptoed around her. "Horrible thing for a 19-year old girl to witness," they said. "No wonder she's ill." ----- Drusilla awoke a week later to findAngelus in her bedroom. The windown shutter she had locked for the first time in years was broken, torn off the hinges. She stared and stared at him. 'Now I see it. He's not real, not natural.' Now that she let herself think it, the curtain was drawn back, a veil lifted and her super senses kicked in, reveraling all that she had hidden from herself and pushed back. 'He's evil.' She felt disconnected from her body, the situation; it wasn't real this *thing* standing before her. It was with detached calm that she was able to say, "Go away." 

"No." 

"I don't want you here." 

"Too bad. You don't have a choice," he grinned, his features slowly changing to reveal his true nature, his fangs coming out. 

He grabbed her roughly by the hair, pulling her to him, his fangs glinting in the moonlight. "Will you kill me now?" she whispered, wanting it more than anything. 'Then I can join mother. If they'll take me in heaven after exposing my family to such evil.' 

"That would be a bit premature and completely defeat the purpose of my cultivating a friendship with you. Do you know how pretty you are, my sweet? You're beautiful — like a living doll. And so innocent, so guileless, untouched, unspoiled. I could see all that in you, all those years ago and it fascinated me. And I hated you for it. So embarrassing, for the mighty Angelus to be obsessed with a human. And nothing will give me greater pleasure then to take this sweet, innocent girl and make you a bloodthirsty, vicious killer like all the rest of us." 

"I'll never be like you. I'll kill you first," she said. Faster than thought she pulled out the knife she'd kept ever since her mother's death. She plunged it into his stomach. then she watched as he pulled it out, completely unruffled. The wound began to heal. 

His hand tightened around her throat. "Don't ever threaten me. You couldn't harm me if your life depended on it. There is no place on this earth you could go that I won't find you." He tilted her head back and looked deep into her eyes. "I see you still have a bit of defiance lurking in those eyes. good, something tells me when I bring you across you'll be one of the bloodthirstiest of us all. But in the meantime, I think I'll have to prove to you how completely you depend on my good graces. Perhaps, another lesson. Do you know how difficult you've made my life? I would try to stay away, but I couldn't. I always came back to you. Darla's tried to kill you three times, and I've only just been able to stop her. She doesn't understand it. I don't understand it. It's laughable, a vampire haunted by a human. I hated you for it," he said again. "Then it came to me. You were right so long ago when you said I was looking for you. I was and I didn't even know it. I had been experiencing some ennui of late. I was dissatisfied. I shall never tire of the hunt, the kill. But it had all become too easy, too predictable. Then I found you — a nice long-term project for me and a fitting punishment for you." 

"How dare you talk to me of punishment? I was a child. You haunted me," she said. 

He stared at her implacably. 

"You're insane," she said. 

"No. But you will be." ----- She wasn't to see him again, but he made his presence felt. A groomsman and a housmaid disappeared, presumably they'd run off together, but Drusilla knew better. A servant was found dead in the gardens. And then another and another. 'If I could only take it all back. I take it back. I take it back.' She became obsessed with going backt o before she had met Angelus, as if she could erase it all if only she tried hard enough. It was little things at first. She took to wearing her hair down, like a little girl's, and soon it grew worse. After two months and six deaths Drusilla's began to wander the halls of her home, singing to herself the songs her mother had sang, playing childish games and holding tea parties. The staff and her family were unnerved by the murders and Drusilla's slow descent into madness. The staff took to crossing themselves when she was around, not fully convinced she wasn't behind it all. And many of them quit. 

Doctors were sent for. They would try to talk to her, but she would just sit staring blankly, mumbling, "I take it back. It didn't happen. It's nto real. You're not real. None of us is real." It had taken a liberal does of laudanum to calm her that time, after which they left her blessedly alone. 

She was coming down the stairs one day when she heard a horrible commotion at the front door. She walked slowly, drawn to it, and pushed her way through the crowd of people. Her brother Robert's eviscerated body lay just outside. Her legs slowly crumpled under her and she didn't have to think of it anymore. 

She awoke in her bedroom. Her lamp was burning. A bouquet of dead roses sat on her writing table with a note. "Happy Birthday, Drusilla. Did you enjoy my present? Angelus." She began to scream faster and faster, the shrieks coming one on top of the other. They couldn't get her to stop for several hours. 

The funeral was sedate, calm. She didn't see Angelus until it was too late and they had all been locked into the church. Cattle for the slaughter. She could only watch as he savagely killed all her relatives and friends one by one, ripping out their throats, exposing their guts. He even drank from some. The fragile hold she had on what was left of her sanity loosened even more. When it was over he didn't say a word, simply leaving her among the carnage. ----- A distant cousing came to handle the estate and discreetly packed her off to a convent on the other side of the country. After a long time there Drusilla began to slowly recover mentally. No disappearances, no bodies and most of all, no Angelus. It began with her following along with the prayers, a ritual she performed gladly for the privelege of sitting alone in the vegetable garden, lost in her own thoughts. It was only there between the rows, sitting in the dirt, alone in the sun, not hemmed in by walls that she felt grounded and safe. After two years, she began to willfully cling to what was left of her sanity, slowly coming back to herself, losing the horror of her past in the comforting ritual of convent life. For the first time, in a long time, she felt safe. The distant cousin sometimes wrote to the sisters, checking on her progress. The deaths had stopped when Drusilla left . . . 

Some years passed; she began to believe it was over. Perhaps, she could have some semblance of a normal life in the convent and live out her days in peace, atoning for the destruction she had unwittingly exposed so many people to. Mentally, she would never fully recover, but she was at peace. She asked to begin the year-long process that led up to joining the order and was accepted. ----- Drusilla walked down the long corridor to her cell, joyously. Her new life had begun. Only an hour ago she had taken her vows in the church and become a full member of the order. 

It was then, as she walked down the hall, that the fire began. Surrounded on all sides, the sisters panicked, streaming out of the convent as it burned, crumbling down around them. They ran this way and that blindly to escape the falling structure. Drusilla fled to the only safe have she had known, the vegetable garden. What she saw snapped the remaining threads of sanity in her mind, one by one, forever. A voice spoke from the darkness. "Hello, Drusilla. It's time for you to come with me," Angelus said. 

The End 


End file.
